Use the word like too much

Results: 16918,
Time: 0.0227

August 15, 2013

“And so she was like, it’s, like, not really, like, a big deal? And I was like, but you don’t, like, even know what you’re talking about, so, like? You know?”

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. For better or worse, the word “like” is a part of the teenage vernacular, staging a takeover of a kid’s vocabulary on the eve of their thirteenth birthday. Of course, today’s teens might not be so inclined toward using it if they knew “like” was a throw-back to 1980s valley-speak, a dialect of California English spoken by Valley Girls and popularized in Frank Zappa’s song, “Valley Girl”.

“This isn’t a new phenomenon,” says Tori Cordiano, a consulting psychologist at the Center for Research on Girls at Laurel School in Shaker Heights, Ohio. “Teens tend to be more dramatic in their speech than adults. They often use ‘like’ to signal emotion (“I, like, lost it when I saw my grade”). They can also use it in place of the grammatically correct word (“He was like, I’ll call you” versus “He said, I’ll call you”). And they may do this more than most adults.”

That said, “like” does have two grammatically correct uses: similarity (“That shirt looks like mine!) or enjoyment (“I like this soup!”). It can also, less correctly, be used to approximate (“It was like six feet wide.”) or as a quotative—a word that can serve as spoken quotation marks.

But, these issues aren’t the real crux of the issue.

It’s sentences that, like, sound, like, this, with, like, every other word, like, being like. What’s that, like, even about?

According to John Ayto, editor of the Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang, “like,” and its counterpart, “you know,” are filler words.

“We all use fillers because we can’t keep up highly-monitored, highly-grammatical language all the time,” Ayto says. “We all have to pause and think. We’ve always used words to plug gaps or make sentences run smoothly.”

Cordiano agrees. “A big reason why teens (and people in general) use the word, ‘like,’ is to fill space while speaking. Adults do this too, although adults may be more likely to use other filler words, such as ‘umm’ or ‘ahh’.”

For some parents, the verbal tic is simply too annoying to stand. “My oldest daughter used to say, ‘like,’ all the time,” says Karen Vargas, whose two teenage sons have never picked up the habit. “It drove us all completely crazy! Sometimes it was hard to even have a conversation with her.”

Others worry that it will make their teenager appear unprofessional in job or academic interviews, but Cordiano says not to worry. “For most teenagers, this isn’t something that parents need to be too concerned about, although many parents describe it as annoying. Similar to teen slang used by previous generations, most of today’s teens tend to decrease their overuse of this word, especially in professional situations, as they mature.”

If it’s a concern for you, there are ways around it.

3 Strategies to Decrease Saying the Word “Like”:

1. Become aware

Cordiano says, “Parents can do a little bit of coaching to decrease its use or to use it correctly. Help your teens to become more aware of their use of the word.” A great strategy for increasing awareness is to simply keep count of the number of “likes” your teen utters in a day. They may be surprised at the total.

2. Replace “like” with a different filler

Cordiano suggests developing this helpful skill: “Teach them to replace the filler word with a pause or a breath.” Advise them to pause when they feel a “like” coming on, rather than uttering the word. Pausing will make them sound more authoritative than using a filler.

3. Expand your vocabulary

And, encourage them to broaden and strengthen their vocabulary. The more words they have at their disposal, the easier they can express a thought and rely less on fillers.

With all that said, don’t, like, mind it too much. Obnoxious though it can seem, most teens do grow out of their “like” phase. And, besides, the word serves the noble purpose of giving teens time to consider what they’re saying before they say it. After all, isn’t that, like, what we want?

© 2023 Prezi Inc.
Terms & Privacy Policy

The -ding form / The Infinitive
Fill in the table
iri9 the following word
Like, too /enough, dont mind, agree, its worth, want
to, cant help. like. avoid. Imagine, hops
Cant and. look forward
expect, to sum
fancy enjoy, prevent, pion
Use the -ing form
Use the to infinite
Choose the correct answer.
1) I dont mind
(to have / having) a meeting
mates.
2) He looks forward to
(to meet / meeting) with her English pen friend
3) I want
(to visit / visiting) my relatives on Christmas.
4) Her Mum cant imagine him
(to get / getting) married to Helen
5) The teacher would like to make his students
(work / working)
better.
6) Lets stop
(to eat eating) at this very moment.
7) We couldnt help
(to smile / smiling) at Charlie Chaplins comedy.
What does she prefer
(to travel travelling) by bike or car?
9) Does he fancy
(to eat / eating) Out tonight?
10) It was difficult enough for him
(to learn learning) to do (freediving
Put the verbs into (to) Infinitive or -ing form
1) She cant
(to imagine) him being a firefighter.
2) We didnt want him
(to disturb) them.
3) We dont mind
(to open) the window, its so stuffy
4) He gave up
(to smoke)
5) The song is worth
(to sing)
6) Would you prefer
(to start) with the result ot the experiment?
7) She fancies
(to go) out tomorrow.
в) Its too difficult
(to do) diving in such cold weather.
9) He promised me
(to return) the glasses in an hour.
10) Avoid
(to dress) smart. There are plenty ot robbers

In 2016, I was offered a promo code to test out a new app designed to help young people talk without filler phrases like you know and like, so they could sound more “authoritative.” I tried not to take the offer personally. For decades, like has been a subject of deep linguistic ridicule — along with vocal fry and uptalk, it is probably the most recognizable aspect of “Valley girl speak.” When making fun of teenage girls, imitators go for these sorts of phrases: “I, like, went to the movies? And I was like, ‘I want to see Superwoman?’ But Brad was like, ‘No way?’ So we, like, left.” (I’m not certain why people love satirizing teen girls so much, but my theory is that it’s just an excuse to speak in this highly entertaining fashion.)

Fortunately, there are plenty of language experts who’ve taken “Valley girl” speak seriously enough to figure out what it actually is. One of these scholars is Carmen Fought, a linguist from Pitzer College, who says, “If women do something like uptalk or vocal fry, it’s immediately interpreted as insecure, emotional or even stupid.” But the truth is much more interesting: Young women use the linguistic features that they do, not as mindless affectations, but as power tools for establishing and strengthening relationships. Vocal fry, uptalk and even like, are in fact not signs of ditziness, but instead all have a unique history and special social utility. And women are not the only people who use them.

Despite the word’s detractors, like is in fact extremely useful and versatile. Alexandra D’Arcy, Canadian linguist at the University of Victoria, has dedicated much of her research to identifying and understanding the many functions of like. D’Arcy ebulliently describes her work for the university’s YouTube channel: “Like is a little word that we really, really don’t like at all — and we want to blame young girls, who we think are destroying the language,” she explains. But the truth is that like has been a part of English for more than 200 years. “We can find speakers today in their 70s, 80s and 90s around little villages in the United Kingdom, for example,” D’Arcy says with a smile, “who use like in many of the same ways that young girls today are using it.”

According to D’Arcy, there are six completely distinct forms of the word like. The two oldest types in English are the adjective like and the verb like. In the sentence, “I like your suit, it makes you look like James Bond,” the first like is a verb and the second is an adjective — and even the crabbiest English speakers are fine with both. Today, these two likes sound exactly the same, so most people don’t even notice that they’re different words with separate histories. They’re homonyms, just how the noun watch (meaning the timepiece on your wrist) and the verb watch (meaning what you do with your eyes when you turn on the TV) are homonyms. The Oxford English Dictionary says that the verb like comes from the Old English term lician, and the adjective comes from the Old English līch. The two converged at some point over the last 800 or so years, giving us lots of time to get used to them.

But four new likes developed much more recently than that — and D’Arcy says these are all separate words with distinct uses, as well. Only two of these likes are used more frequently by women, and only one of them is thought to have been masterminded by young Southern California females in the 1990s. That one would be the quotative like, which you hear in, “I was like, ‘I want to see Superwoman.’” As lampooned as it is, pragmatically speaking, this like is one of my favorites because it allows you to tell a story, to relay something that happened, without having to quote the interaction verbatim. For example, in the sentence “My boss was like, ‘I need those papers by Monday,’ and I was like, ‘Are you f—ing kidding me?’” you’re not repeating what you truly said but instead using like to convey what you wanted to say or how you felt in the interaction. Thanks, Valley girls. This very useful quotative like continues to explode in common usage.

The other like that women tend to use more frequently is categorized as a discourse marker and can be found in contexts such as, “Like, this suit isn’t even new.” A discourse marker — sometimes called a filler word — is a type of phrase that can help a person connect, organize or express a certain attitude with their speech. Other discourse markers include the hedges just, you know and actually.

There are two last forms of like: one is an adverb, which is used to approximate something, as in the sentence, “I bought this suit like five years ago.” As of the 1970s this like has largely replaced the approximate adverb about in casual conversation, and it has always been used equally among men and women (so it isn’t hated as much). And last, there’s the discourse particle like, which we hear in, “I think this suit is like my favorite possession.” This like is similar to the discourse marker, except that it’s not used in quite the same way syntactically or semantically; plus, dudes use it just as much as women do (D’Arcy doesn’t know quite why that is), though they’re almost never ridiculed for it.

Objectively, we can see that using one, two or all of these different likes in the same sentence isn’t inherently bad. As a matter of fact, some studies have demonstrated that speech lacking in likes and you knows can sound too careful, robotic or unfriendly. So next time someone accuses you of saying like too much, feel free to ask them, “Oh really? Which kind?” Because D’Arcy says that ordinary speakers tend to buy into the Valley girl stereotype so hardcore, blaming young women for all of these likes, simply because they don’t notice the differences among them.

From the book WORDSLUT. Copyright © 2019 by Amanda Montell. Published on May 28, 2019 by Harper Wave, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted by permission.

Contact us at letters@time.com.